“…Since they are intended to compete with shell elements, solid-shell elements are expected to have two key features: they contain only displacements as degrees of freedom, and they are able to reproduce the behavior of thin structures by means of a single layer of elements through the thickness. In the last decade, several examples of such formulations have been proposed, and can be found in Domissy [23], Cho et al [24], Hauptmann and Schweizerhof [25], Lemosse [26], Sze and Yao [27], Hauptmann et al [28], Sze and Chan [29], Abed-Meraim and Combescure [30,31], Legay and Combescure [32], Vu-Quoc and Tan [33], Sze et al [34], Chen and Wu [35], Kim et al [36], Alves de Sousa et al [37][38][39], and Reese [40]. It should be noted that most of the methods developed earlier were based on the enhanced assumed strain method proposed by Simo and co-workers (Simo and Rifai [41], Simo and Armero [42], Simo et al [43]), and consisted of either the use of a conventional integration scheme with appropriate control of all locking phenomena or the application of a reduced integration technique with associated hourglass control.…”